Best and worst crimes for employment?

[Razgovory]

Indigent drunks you mean. Wealthy drunks don't pass out on the street wearing rags. On the rarer occasion a member of polite society got too drunk in public the authorities were primarily concerned with getting them home safely so they could sleep it off. Chronic drunks on the street were a good target for institutionalization sure.

No, any drunks.  Indigent drunks were good, but any drunk that was annoying to the family or the town risked getting tossed in.  Sanatoriums were full of inconvenient wealthy people.

[Razgovory]

Marti, not sure how you blame mental health on Reagan. That shit started in the 70s as part of a liberal movement in America aimed to restore the "rights" of the mentally ill. Psychiatric hospitals were dramatically de-emphasized because they were seen as "institutionalizing" sick people, and now are mostly only used to house the most extreme cases and the criminally insane. Because the States have basically stopped building new psych hospitals most of them are 50% or more filled with criminal court patients who they have to house, making beds for those who haven't already committed crimes nearly impossible to get.

The liberals who hated psychiatric institutions insisted group homes were the way to go, and yeah for many mental patients a group home is a much better place than a psychiatric hospital. Unfortunately the group home system isn't set up to keep people there who do not want to be there, and group homes have rules. Many people with serious mental illness have serious problems with those rules (no alcohol, no drug use etc), so they refuse to stay in the group home and refuse treatment. Basically achieving what the liberals of the 1970s wanted--mentally ill people having the "freedom" to decide to devolve into untreated and unmedicated insanity.

That's fine for the mostly harmless schizophrenics or manic-depressives who can eke out a minimal existence in society unmedicated, but for the rare person who is deeply mentally disturbed this liberalization of mental health made it a lot harder to get those people committed. Before the 70s, a psychiatrist could basically have anyone committed at least for awhile. This was seen as being too much power, so now they have to explicitly believe someone is an imminent danger to themselves or others to get them committed. Even that decision has to immediately be reviewed by a mental health commissioner and a judicial authority in many jurisdictions. In the 70s a guy like James Holmes would've been taken to the hospital after his first therapy session, but Reagan isn't to blame for why he wasn't.

It's neat how neither what you or marty are talking about reflects the actual history of mental health in the US.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Unlike you I haven't been medicated anytime in the past 40 years so my knowledge of history (both from reading and actually living through some of these changes) supersedes the knowledge of a moron who has multiple "issues" any day.

[OttoVonBismarck]

No, any drunks.  Indigent drunks were good, but any drunk that was annoying to the family or the town risked getting tossed in.  Sanatoriums were full of inconvenient wealthy people.

Sure, inconvenient people like Rosemary Kennedy whose daddy could have her lobotomized and locked away. But people like Joe Kennedy Sr.? Not a chance, he could pass out drunk in the street five nights a week and the worst he'd have ever gotten was a police escort home to his mansion.

[Razgovory]

Unlike you I haven't been medicated anytime in the past 40 years so my knowledge of history (both from reading and actually living through some of these changes) supersedes the knowledge of a moron who has multiple "issues" any day.

Not even an aspirin?

[Iormlund]

... although counterarguments could be made about per capita consumption of law enforcement and justice).

Really? You think your average Joe uses more resources than say Apple and their countless lawsuits?

[Admiral Yi]

Really? You think your average Joe uses more resources than say Apple and their countless lawsuits?

Apple shareholders are mostly average Joes.

[Razgovory]

I thought there was a difference between a company and it's shareholders.

[Admiral Yi]

There are a plethora of differences between shareholders and companies.

[Razgovory]

I'm glad we agree.

[Iormlund]

Really? You think your average Joe uses more resources than say Apple and their countless lawsuits?

Apple shareholders are mostly average Joes.

Right. Do I really need to post a wealth distribution chart?

[Martinus]

I thought there was a difference between a company and it's shareholders.

There's even more differences between a company and its shareholders.

[Barrister]

To me, the question is did the management of  the store know that she was mentally retarded to such a degree that should couldn't be tried?  If they knew, then simply taking back the pork rinds and kicding her out would have been the best play (assuming that she didn't get violent or anything of that nature, which it would appear she didn't).  If they didn't know, they did the right thing in calling the police IMO.

I don't know about law in your jurisdiction.

Here, 'mental retardation' will rarely qualify you as NCRMD (not criminally responsible by reason of mental defect).  Hell my 2 year old has okay notions of ownership.  I've worked with some pretty profoundly afflicted people, and they know you can't take items from a store without paying for them.

Putting this on the store is bullshit.  Of course they should call the cops.  You're dealing with a LPO earning close to minimum wage.  They are not going to be making a whole lot of nuanced decisions based on public policy.

Once the cops are called... Well this gets back to my original question.  Mental issues, first time offender... why the hell does the system care?  Should be withdrawn, no problem.

But someone with mental issues who repeatedly shoplifts?  Then there's a place for the ciminal justice system.  That doesn't mean jail, necessarily.  But something needs to be done.

Mihali, you never responded to this.

[derspiess]

Hell my 2 year old has okay notions of ownership.

"MINE, MINE, MINE!!"?

[Barrister]

Hell my 2 year old has okay notions of ownership.

"MINE, MINE, MINE!!"?

Sometimes.

But he can be satisfied at times if we say "no Tim, that is Baby Andrew's blanket" or "we can't play with that toy it belongs to someone else".